How it all began - #PrideMonth #GayRomance #LGBTQ @NeilPlakcy

 

By Neil Plakcy (Guest Blogger)

I remember my introduction to MM romance very clearly. I was browsing in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in a now-destroyed specialty shopping center in South Miami, killing time with my partner before we were to meet friends for dinner. I was idly browsing whatever passed for the gay section back then and found this trade paperback with a colorful cover and two cute guys.

I bought it immediately, but sadly, I gave it away years ago in a purge of books so I can’t even remember the title or the author. But it opened the world of gay romance to me, and that spurred me to write my first one, an assistant/boss romance set at a gay website on South Beach, called GayLife.com.

My newest romances are both historical, and they both take place in the same year—1872—though The Gentleman and the Spy is set in England and The Lock-Keeper’s Heart in rural Pennsylvania. Both are historical with a slow burn, as I think is fitting for the times.

The Lock-Keeper’s Heart is set in the area where I grew up, as the country recovers from the Civil War and two broken-hearted men are thrust together in a lock-keeper's cottage along the Delaware Canal.

First reviewer writes: "This book is perfect for those of us who enjoy MM historical romance. You will be happy to lose yourself in its pages."

Second reviewer: "This was an enjoyable read set in an American historical setting with interesting references to experiences I was unaware of."

Just what I wanted to do!

https://amzn.to/3vLkrUD

https://books2read.com/u/bQJWBe

Excerpt

While Lenert set the fire, Isaac braved the gusting rain to head out behind the outhouse, where he kept a big copper tub collecting rainwater in case of drought. The tub was half as long as Isaac himself, nearly three feet, and full to the brim with fresh rainwater. Isaac had some time before rigged up a pulley system he could use to drag the tub into the house, and he strained to tug it up to the back door.

When Lenert saw what he was doing, he applied his strength as well, and they dragged the tub into the house and placed it beside the fire. Isaac ladled water from the tub into several pots, which he put on the stovetop. He also hung one on a metal spit above the fire.

When he was finished, he pulled off his sopping shirt and wrung it out in the basin, then hung it near the fireplace. “You should do the same,” he said to Lenert, as he attempted to swallow the desire he had to see his naked chest.

Isaac poured a kettle of steaming water into the tub, then put another up to boil. The question in his mind bubbled up to the surface. “Do you write to your parents? Let them know you are all right?”

“They do not wish to hear.” He began to unbutton his shorts. “We must take off all wet clothes.”

Isaac turned his head to avoid reacting to Lenert’s nakedness. The tub was long and deep enough that Isaac could sit in the water, with his legs pulled up, and use a ladle and a cloth to clean himself. He hurried to strip his pants and drawers, and then got into the tub, even though the water was still chilly. At least the cold water had the expected effect on his cock, causing it to shrivel.

Isaac had closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he saw Lenert standing over him, fully naked and holding a bucket of hot water, his generous jack at half-mast. “Move back, please,” Lenert said, and when Isaac pulled his legs up close Lenert dumped the pot of hot water.

Isaac could not help a sigh of pleasure at the warmth of the water. Then he noticed Lenert watching him, and his rod began to stiffen. He quickly pulled his legs up to hide it from view.

Damn. He had forgotten the soap. “Could you bring the soap, please,” he asked, his throat tight – from the water, or from desire. He didn’t know which.

Lenert walked to the counter, and droplets of sweat on his back and ass shimmered in the low firelight. As he returned, his cock wagged from side to side.

He handed the soap to Isaac, and fire erupted from his fingertips as his hands touched Lenert’s in a surge of emotion. He could tell from the way Lenert backed his hand away quickly that he felt it too.

Lenert brought one of the wooden kitchen chairs over and placed it beside the tub. Isaac had no choice but to relax his legs as far as he could and begin to wash himself, to hide the stiffness in his prick. They were already close to a master-servant relationship, the way Lenert had delivered the soap, and waited by the tub with a towel for Isaac. He didn’t want Lenert to feel he had to do anything more.

“We have tub like this on our farm,” Lenert said, smiling. “Always my father bathe first, then my sisters, together. Then me, and my mother last.”

Isaac’s cock was already painfully hard and imagining Lenert naked in the tub did nothing to help. The Prussian’s gaze was unnerving, as if he was touching Isaac in all the places the soap and rag did. “You want I wash your back?” Lenert asked.

Isaac knew he ought to refuse the offer. He didn’t want Lenert to be obligated to do anything. But he was weak, and so he said, “Yes, please.”

Lenert’s touch was gentle, rubbing the cloth along Isaac’s shoulders, and yet every bit of Isaac’s skin seemed to breathe and glow with an inner warmth. The cloth was rough but the soap smooth, and the combination of the two permeated deep into his body. He pulled inward, letting the pleasure fill him.

The skin was the largest organ in the body, Isaac recalled from the natural science class he had taken in his first year at the University, where it was part of the program that included Latin, Greek, ethics, oratory, logic, history and mathematics. But he had never thought of it as a living thing, one that could create such sensations in his body.

Isaac bent forward so Lenert could move down. In that class he had been required to learn the major bones of the body, and then identify them on a chart as part of his examination. To force his jack down, he closed his eyes as Lenert gently washed his spinal column, thoracic vertebrae, and scapula.

It didn’t work. With every touch, his cock quivered with delight. It seemed impossibly hard, like a wooden branch that had sprung from his body. The gentle wave of the bath water every time Isaac moved pushed past his stiffness, exciting the nerves that stood out in relief.

“Stand, please,” Lenert said.

“Oh no, I’m fine.” Isaac was mortified to raise up out of the water, his cock bobbing in front of him.

“Please,” Lenert said, tugging on Isaac’s shoulders, and there was something in the plaintive tone of his voice that Isaac couldn’t resist. He stood, water cascading down, feeling exposed and vulnerable as his cock bounced against his belly. Then it stood out, an extension of his being that existed only to give him pleasure, and he shivered with delight.

Lenert soaped the rag again, squeezed it out, and began to gently massage Isaac’s lower back. The latissimus dorsi, the external abdominal obliques. The air in the cottage was cool, and the sensations of warm water and cool air combined to make him conscious of every square inch of his flesh. Isaac closed his eyes, relishing the touch, until Lenert moved the rag down to the top of Isaac’s buttocks, and his eyes snapped open in surprise.

Lenert said nothing, just continued to carefully wash Isaac’s butt. The gentle touch of Lenert’s fingers tickled and teased along top of his cheeks, smoothing the curve from his erect back to their roundness.

Isaac was so hard and ready to spend that he worried he would do so from the feel of Lenert’s hand back there, without ever touching his jack. Was that even possible? That a man could stimulate his body so much that it sought release without a single caress?

The movement of Lenert’s index finger down the crease between Isaac’s buttocks was as unexpected as it was delightful, and he shivered with pleasure. He felt completely out of control, at the mercy of whatever Lenert chose to do.

“We make you very clean,” Lenert said. “When I was little boy, my mother tell me I must wash these parts very carefully.” He worked for a moment, the warm water and the soap relaxing Isaac’s muscles and opening his hole. As Lenert spread the cheeks wide, the cool air rushed in and Isaac flexed the muscles back there.

Lenert rinsed the rag and then wiped the area clean with additional water, and Isaac was relieved that he had not embarrassed himself any further by spending into the bath.

Then he was startled by the feel of Lenert’s tongue at his hole. “Oh, my,” he said with a gulp. Stephen had used a single finger back there, but never his tongue.

“Is all right?” Lenert asked.

Isaac wanted to tell him to stop, that he didn’t have to do this, but once again he was weak, and all he could manage to say was “Very.”

“Yes, all clean,” Lenert said after he stepped away, and the tingling sensations began to subside. “But front must be clean as well.”

He tugged on Isaac’s waist until he turned around. Isaac’s face was flushed, his body glowed, and his peter was stiff and straining. Lenert dipped the rag into the water again and began to wash Isaac in a way that no one ever had, caressing his cock and balls, rubbing against the area behind them that led to his hole.

He was so excited that tears began leaking from his eyes. And then Lenert was stroking his jack harder and harder with the rag, and pleasure raced through his body. He closed his eyes and saw stars, he clenched his teeth and held his breath, until Isaac could hold back no longer, and with a cry and a shudder he spent into the cloth.

His bones felt like they were made of aspic and could barely hold him up. “Yes, all clean now.” Lenert rinsed the rag once more. “One last thing. Must wash your hair.”

“I can do that,” Isaac said.

“No, no. You stay.”

As Isaac stood there in the knee-deep water, shivering in his nakedness, Lenert took the pot from the fire and poured some hot water into a bowl, which he mixed with cold. Then he said, “Close eyes, please.”

Isaac did, and Lenert stepped into the tub, the water sloshing around their knees. He was as close as they were in bed when they slept. He was as naked as Isaac, and an erotic thrill surged through Isaac’s body.

Lenert poured some of the water over Isaac’s head, letting it cascade through Isaac’s locks to his scalp, then trickle down his back. The Prussian was a few inches taller than Isaac, so the angle was right for Lenert to massage some soap into Isaac’s blond hair, then rinse it out.

Lenert’s fingers were so gentle, teasing out knots, massaging his scalp. Isaac shivered again from the sheer pleasure of it.

Then Lenert leaned away, grabbing the towel from where he had hung it on the back of the wooden chair. He began to dry Isaac’s body one part at a time, first his arms and his back and then his chest, moving lower to his half-hard cock.

“You should bathe yourself,” Isaac said. “I will heat more water.”

“I don’t need,” Lenert said.

Isaac smiled. “The bath will not be for you, but for me.”

About the Author

Neil Plakcy is the author of over fifty gay romance, gay mystery and adventure, and cozy mystery novels. His eclectic work career includes stints in shopping mall construction, web development, and computer game producing. He is a professor of English at Broward College in the Fort Lauderdale suburbs, where he lives with his husband and two rambunctious golden retrievers.

Links

Website www.mahubooks.com
Twitter https://www.twitter.com/NeilPlakcy

The Lock-Keeper’s Heart

https://amzn.to/3vLkrUD

https://books2read.com/u/bQJWBe

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